_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday.
[Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
How will the love my heart is full of for you, let me be silent?
Insufficient speech is better than no speech, in one regard--the
speaker had _tried_ words, and if they fail, hereafter he needs not
reflect that he did not even try--so with me now, that loving you, Ba,
with all my heart and soul, all my senses being lost in one wide
wondering gratitude and veneration, I press close to you to say so, in
this imperfect way, my dear dearest beloved! Why do you not help me,
rather than take my words, my proper word, from me and call them
yours, when yours they are not? You said lately love of you 'made you
humble'--just as if to hinder _me_ from saying that earnest
truth!--entirely true it is, as I feel ever more convincingly. You do
not choose to understand it should be so, nor do I much care, for the
one thing you must believe, must resolve to believe in its length and
breadth, is that I do love you and live only in the love of you.
I will rest on the confidence that you do so believe! You _know_ by
this that it is no shadowy image of you and _not_ you, which having
attached myself to in the first instance, I afterward compelled my
fancy to see reproduced, so to speak, with tolerable exactness to the
original idea, in you, the dearest real _you_ I am blessed with--you
_know_ what the eyes are to me, and the lips and the hair. And I, for
my part, know _now_, while fresh from seeing you, certainly _know_,
whatever I may have said a short time since, that _you_ will go on to
the end, that the arm round me will not let me go,--over such a blind
abyss--I refuse to think, to fancy, _towards_ what it would be to
loose you now! So I give my life, my soul into your hand--the giving
is a mere form too, it is yours, ever yours from the first--but ever
as I see you, sit with you, and come away to think over it all, I find
more that seems mine to give; you give me more life and it goes back
to you.
I shall hear from you to-morrow--then, I will go out early and get
done with some calls, in the joy and consciousness of what waits me,
and when I return I will write a few words. Are these letters, these
merest attempts at getting to talk with you through the distance--yet
always with the consolation of feeling that you will know all,
interpret all and forgive it and put it right--can such things be
cared for, expected, as you say? Then, Ba, my life _must_ be better
... with the closeness to help, and the 'finding out the way' for
which love was always noted. If you begin making in fancy a lover to
your mind, I am lost at once--but the one quality of _affection_ for
you, which would sooner or later have to be placed on his list of
component graces; _that_ I will dare start supply--the entire love you
could dream of _is_ here. You think you see some of the other
adornments, and only too many; and you will see plainer one day, but
with that I do not concern myself--you shall admire the true
heroes--but me you shall love for the love's sake. Let me kiss you,
you, my dearest, dearest--God bless you ever--
_R.B. to E.B.B._
[Post-mark, March 16, 1846.]
Indeed I would, dearest Ba, go with entire gladness and pride to see a
light that came from your room--why should that surprise you? Well,
you will _know_ one day.
We understand each other too about the sofas and gilding--oh, I know
you, my own sweetest! For me, if I had set those matters to heart, I
should have turned into the obvious way of getting them--not _out_ of
it, as I did resolutely from the beginning. All I meant was, to
express a very natural feeling--if one could give you diamonds for
flowers, and if you liked diamonds,--then, indeed! As it is, wherever
we are found shall be, if you please, 'For the love's sake found
therein--sweetest _house_ was ever seen!'
Mr. Kenyon must be merciful. Lilies are of all colours in
Palestine--one sort is particularized as _white_ with a dark blue spot
and streak--the water lily, lotos, which I think I meant, is _blue_
altogether.
I have walked this morning to town and back--I feel much better,
'honestly'! The head better--the spirits rising--as how should they
not, when _you_ think all will go well in the end, when you write to
me that you go down-stairs and are stronger--and when the rest is
written?
Not more now, dearest, for time is pressing, but you will answer
this,--the love that is not here,--not the idle words, and I will
reply to-morrow. Thursday is so far away yet!
Bless you, my very own, only dearest!
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Monday Evening.
[Post-mark, March 17, 1846.]
Dearest, you are dearest always! Talk of Sirens, ... there must be
some masculine ones 'rari nantes,' I fancy, (though we may not find
them in unquestionable authorities like your Ælian!) to justify this
voice I hear. Ah, how you speak, with that pretension, too, to
dumbness! What should people be made of, in order to bear such words,
do you think? Will all the wax from all the altar-candles in the
Sistine Chapel, keep the piercing danger from their ears? Being tied
up a good deal tighter than Ulysses did not save _me_. Dearest
dearest: I laugh, you see, as usual, not to cry! But deep down, deeper
than the Sirens go, deep underneath the tides, _there_, I bless and
love you with the voice that makes no sound.
Other human creatures (how often I do think it to myself!) have their
good things scattered over their lives, sown here and sown there, down
the slopes, and by the waysides. But with me ... I have mine all
poured down on one spot in the midst of the sands!--if you knew what I
feel at moments, and at half-hours, when I give myself up to the
feeling freely and take no thought of red eyes. A woman once was
killed with gifts, crushed with the weight of golden bracelets thrown
at her: and, knowing myself, I have wondered more than a little, how
it was that I could _bear_ this strange and unused gladness, without
sinking as the emotion rose. Only I was incredulous at first, and the
day broke slowly ... and the gifts fell like the rain ... softly; and
God gives strength, by His providence, for sustaining blessings as
well as stripes. Dearest--
For the rest I understand you perfectly--perfectly. It was simply to
your _thoughts_, that I replied ... and that you need not say to
yourself any more, as you did once to me when you brought me flowers,
that you wished they were diamonds. It was simply to prevent the
accident of such a _thought_, that I spoke out mine. You would not
wish accidentally that you had a double-barrelled gun to give me, or a
cardinal's hat, or a snuff box, and I meant to say that you _might as
well_--as diamonds and satin sofas à la Chorley. Thoughts are
something, and _your_ thoughts are something more. To be sure they
are!
You are better you say, which makes me happy of course. And you will
not make the 'better' worse again by doing wrong things--_that_ is my
petition. It was the excess of goodness to write those two letters for
me in one day, and I thank you, thank you. Beloved, when you write,
_let_ it be, if you choose, ever so few lines. Do not suffer me (for
my own sake) to tire you, because two lines or three bring _you_ to me
... remember ... just as a longer letter would.
But where, pray, did I say, and when, that 'everything would end
well?' Was _that_ in the dream, when we two met on the stairs? I did
not really say so I think. And 'well' is how you understand it. If you
jump out of the window you succeed in getting to the ground, somehow,
dead or alive ... but whether _that_ means 'ending well,' depends on
your way of considering matters. I am seriously of opinion
nevertheless, that if 'the arm,' you talk of, _drops_, it will not be
for weariness nor even for weakness, but because it is cut off at the
shoulder. _I_ will not fail to you,--may God so deal with me, so bless
me, so leave me, as I live only for you and _shall_. Do you doubt
_that_, my only beloved! Ah, you know well--_too well_, people would
say ... but I do not think it 'too well' myself, ... knowing _you_.